ERTL Farm House Set

I picked up one of these online. The ERTL stuff is listed as 1/64th scale (same as the Machine Shed. See that here, here and here) but I think it runs a little big.

Here's a repainted Heroclix mini for comparison.

 and

It's a small-ish house but it works for me. Well... it WILL work as soon as I finish it. ;)

How will I finish it? 

Well..., I started by cutting down some left over illustration board to fit in as interior walls. They measure 1-7/8" high. The short walls are 4-1/16" wide and the longer walls are 6-9/16" wide.

Next, I cut them and placed them in the house to make sure they fit. Adjust/trim as necessary.

Next, I grab a knife and "score" into the board from the outside using the windows as my guide. You could use a pencil or pen here too, I just went in with the knife.

Then cut the windows all the way out.

Place them inside to see how well they work. As you can see in the picture below I also measured out the floor space and cut a piece of board to fit. Right now, since I haven't decided if I'm going to glue the walls in or not, I recommend cutting the walls first, then measure for the floor. This way when you place the floor in it helps to hold the walls in place. My idea is to be able to swap the walls out so that I can have different color walls or paneling or things like that.

Next I grabbed a bunch of coffee stirrers and started laying out a floor. The more narrow the better as far as I'm concerned.

I started by laying out 4 sticks and measuring them for the width of the interior floor. Then I started glueing the floor slats to the support sticks. I had to add extra support sticks periodically to help keep the sticks close together and to keep them from bowing or warping.

Next time I'm going to vary the pattern a bit more, this is a little to "patterny" for my tastes. It should look more like a hardwood floor.
Yeah... nitpicky... I know.

It does look pretty cool when placed inside the house.

That's it for now. Coming up I plan to:

  • Create another hardwood floor for the second level

  • Create the attic

  • Create a basement space

  • Paint the exterior of the house

  • Figure out how to make some better shutters
  • Make it so that the door can be opened. Maybe.
  • Make some interior walls that can be arranged in different configurations.

  • Create a stairwell

  • Make or buy some furniture

  • I'm sure there's more but I can't think of anything else right now.

Painting Goal for February. Complete!

The goal: 10 miniatures a month.
Here's 11 for February. 
7 zombies and one fresh victim.

Left to Right: Heroclix Vertigo (with a greenstuff robe), Horrorclix zombie, Zpocalypse Hospital Horde, I forget the next one but it's a metal mini, then another little girl from the hospital horde and another Vertigo clix.

In the front row is a downed zombie from the Wargames Factory Zombie Vixens set and a Heroclix conversion (mostly a HC black Mask mini) victim.

Next up? 2 Survivors and a construction worker zombie.

Superboy with added bats (greenstuff again), another Aaron Cash clix and a Horrorclix zombie with a Detroit Tigers hat on that I can't get a good pic of.

Painting Goal for January. Complete!

The goal: 10 miniatures a month.
Here's January
5 zombies. It's hard to tell from this picture but the zombie cop on the left kinda looks like Burt Reynolds. The little girl zombie is still clutching her teddy bear and on the containment suits I added some clear plastic visors to them.

The cops are Heroclix (Aaron Cash with new hands) miniatures and the other 3 are from the Zpocalypse Hospital Horde set.


5 Survivors (yes, I am including the motorcycle).
It's hard to tell in this pic too but the blonde detective has a bloody bandage over her nose. The miniature was damaged and it looked weird as I painted it, so I flattened it out a bit more and gave her a busted nose.

The survivors are all repainted heroclix miniatures

Life and stuff...

With the added expense of daycare my wife and I decided that we could no longer afford our studio space. We gave it up in the fall and I moved everything into a storage space. The goal was to have enough room in there to be able to go in and do a little work now and then.

Sadly, that goal was not attainable. It starts with properly labeled boxes and the intent of having an organized space and it ends with a mad dash of cramming everything into whatever available boxes you have and throwing it into the storage space.

The new, altered, goal was to just be able to find stuff so I could bring it home to work on. That goal has been met. So far.


Speaking of goals, I have decided to try and paint 10 minis a month. Or 120 miniatures by years end. I'd also like to include building a few IHC Homes of Yesterday and Today model kits. Lets say 4 of those (I have 6 or 7 of them).

 I have all 5 of the storefront buildings.
     300-14 Second Hand Rose

     300-15 South Street Smoke Shop

     300-16 Rita's Antique Shop

     300-17 O'Weeds Greenery

     300-18 Grant Cary's Apothecary

And 2 of the Gingerbread houses:
     300-2 The Queen Anne House
     300-3 Steiner House

I will take some pics at another time (and detail my plans for them), until then these ebay pics will do.

All in all it seems like an attainable goal as I have already painted 21 minis. So, January and February are basically covered before February starts. Though I suspect that at the end of the year I'll have about 50-60 painted and maybe 1 IHC kit put together (I have already started on one IHC kit as I type this so that should get finished). I have to add the ERTL farm house to this list.